” You are a good and faithful people, but sometimes you fail to see the power that is resident in your own story and fellowship. Look carefully, listen attentively, and sense the Spirit among you.” Doctrine and Covenants 162:8a

Our Road to Emmaus

I’ve been reading and pondering Luke 24, the story of the Road to Emmaus. Here is a link to the story…

I’m left with so many question…

Why don’t the disciples recognize Jesus among them?

Why don’t we recognize Jesus among us, and the church of our future?

We are bewildered and rehearsing our woes, just like they were. Our hopes and dreams are dying along with our numbers and buildings.

We are coming to realize that if we seek  to build the Church as it once was, we might not find the church of God’s future.

Like the disciples, we are coming to see that Christ is found in the eyes of the stranger.

We are coming to understand that we have denied Christ unwittingly, and have some repenting to do. Repenting is a grace beyond confessing and regretting an infraction. It is retracing our steps, finding what error in belief or attitude or heart led us to where we are, and learning to better align all that we are and do with the mission of Christ.

Many times….We have denied the fullness of Christ and held up the story of our Church in His place.

Many times…We have raised up our distinctive beliefs higher than the One we love, trust, and  follow.

Not intentionally, but because we didn’t understand. I certainly didn’t.

My belief is that we are over-burdened by our fears, like the men on the road to Emmaus. We need eyes of hope, faith, companionship, trusting community…. these are often absent when our hearts are hard with fear.

Eventually, the early church people were booted from the synagogues and found new life in house churches living the Way of Christ in an upside down community of equality, generosity, and love. Many Churches in our times are leaving their  worship homes because of  low numbers and financial resources, and finding new life and emerging visions of Community not tethered to a building.

They ate together, shared so that all were fed, told their stories of grief and hopes, and from the rubble and ashes came a revolutionary movement that changed the world. The church was stripped down to it’s most basic dna…the loving hearts and hands of those who follow Jesus Way of love, peace and justice, and rebuilt into something transforming for their times and place and peoples.

The Saints of today can reclaim that same spiritual dna.  May we orient our lives and ministry and stewardship to bring expressions of love, hope, peace and justice into empty places of this place and time.

What is God up to in your neighborhood?

The Missional Network is sharing a couple of ideas and experiments each day for a month.  The program is called 30 Days of Joining God in the Neighborhood.    Here is a snapshot of Day 1.  If you do some of these things, absolutely  report back here or to your very own congregation where you saw God moving, and how you might Join God there.

Featured Post: Love Wins: Rethinking the Gospel

I don’t know the blogger, Rebel God, but I am always captivated by his posts.  He/She puts the Good News into relational terms better than most. Here are a couple of quotes, and the link so you can visit.

“Isn’t God the one who teaches us to forgive and love our enemies? So if that’s true, then why would God act the opposite? I’m sure you’ve heard people say it is because he takes sin so seriously, but really doesn’t that in fact trivialize sin? Doesn’t it make God look petty and unjust? That is one of the biggest reasons people leave the faith, that and all the suffering and injustice in the world. In short, the major reason people leave Christianity is because of moral outrage, because sin–real sin, the kind that deeply wounds people, the kind that destroys lives–is not being taken seriously enough.”

and

“That is the urgency that Jesus preaches: stop hurting each other, stop with your stupid wars and killing in God’s name, stop with all the condemnation and hatred! Learn the way of the cross, the way of overcoming evil with good, the way of enemy love. That is a way that is not just some trivial religious concern which seems so tangential to life, it is about real stuff, life and death stuff, quite literally.”

http://www.therebelgod.com/2011/04/love-wins-rethinking-gospel.html

provocative Easter sermon by Sarcastic Lutheran

I especially like her thoughts on “newness”, what it means to be new in Christ.

“So while the churches may try and clean up Jesus so the visitors will be impressed today, The God of Easter, the God who brings life out of death doesn’t want to make you impressive, this God isn’t satisfied with making you good or nice. IF you think that’s what resurrection looks like, if you think it looks like perfection and piety and therefore you haven’t experienced it, you might be wrong. Because God isn’t about making you spiffy. God isn’t about making you nicer. God is about making you new. And new doesn’t always look perfect, with a fabulous new dress because like the Easter story itself, new can be messy.

New looks like recovering alcoholics. New looks like reconciliation between family members who don’t actually deserve it. New looks like every time I manage to admit I was wrong and every time I manage to not mention when I’m right. New looks like the lumpy awkward forgiveness we manage to scrounge up despite ourselves. New looks like every fresh start and every act of forgiveness and every moment of letting go of what we thought we couldn’t live without and then somehow living without it anyway. New is the thing you never saw coming …never even hoped for, but ends up being what you needed all along and it happens to all of us. Because as Jesus said…the world according to God is near to us. And God simply keeps reaching down into the dirt of humanity and pulling us out of the graves we dig for ourselves through our violence, our lies, our selfishness, our arrogance and our addictions. And God keeps loving us back to life over and over.”

Gathering Us In blog

Becoming Visible was becoming a visual nightmare.  I’ve had to reorganize.   I have separated out the Community of Christ blogosphere and put it on a new blog called Gathering Us In.  I’m liking it better already.  I have a few blogs left here that I really really love, and many are written by people in my face to face life.  Here, I want to focus on my life, experience, thoughts, and offerings.  At Gathering Us In I plan to focus on my Community of Christ‘s  journey–so entwined with mine, and possibly  find some way for dialogue to happen.  It’s all  a work in progress.

thanks for reading,

Stacie